No Sholay print for Hema at Bangkok film festival

The scarcity of proper prints to honour Bollywood stars at international retrospectives has a come to light again. In 2005, Amitabh Bachchan had to abandon the idea of taking Sholay for a retrospective to the Lincoln Centre in New York.

Now it's another Bollywood legend's turn to get Sholay-fatigued. Last week Ramesh Sippy's historic potboiler almost couldn't make it to the retrospective of Hema Malini's films at the Bangkok International Film Festival.

Now in Chennai, the marquee queen reveals, "They screened Sholay on a DVD and without subtitles. Nobody could get a hand on the print. So they just blew up the DVD print and projected it on the screen and that too without subtitles. Nowadays every Hindi film is immediately subtitled. I guess it wasn't so easy back then. We need to do something about this right away."

At the festival in Lincoln Centre, Mr Bachchan had refused to allow Sholay to be screened on a DVD.

It's generally felt that the authorities need to get more alert over the ready availability of films for such retrospectives. Says Hema, "My brother handled the whole thing here while the embassy in Bangkok monitored everything from there. Our Indian ambassador Lata Reddy in Bangkok took very keen interest in my retrospective. It was very difficult to locate the prints of my films. Now that the Hindi film industry is becoming popular all over the world we need to have a bank of every artiste's film ready for international events. The authorities should take every artiste into confidence and select 10 of his or her best films."

The Thai papers are crammed with complimentary reports on Hema's sojourn. "The reports were very flattering. All part of my past glory," she laughs. "A retrospective means I'm part of the past, right? The Festival is on at a centrally located multiplex. But I left Bangkok after Sholay. Indians came from all over South Asia. And they seemed quite excited to see me. There were many big stars from Asian cinema all over the world."

Now she's back in Chennai. "I went to meet my daughter in Pondicherry where she's shooting for a film called 123," says the indulgent mother. "Now they want to hold my retrospective in Moscow in September. The Russians are very fond of my films like Alibaba Aur Chaalis Chor and Seeta Aur Geeta. I wonder if I'll be able to get the prints!"